


Picking up the pieces.

by BlueFloyd



Category: Mamma Mia! (2008), Mamma Mia! (Movies), Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018)
Genre: Alternative Perspective, F/M, The Other Woman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-17 04:09:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15453045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueFloyd/pseuds/BlueFloyd
Summary: What was it like, for Sam's fiancee? Seeing him come back from Greece, saying he wanted to call off the marriage? Seeing him leaving, then coming back again, heartbroken? To be the one caring for him, building a life with him while he was hoping for a more adventurous and glamorous woman stranded somewhere in Greece? To be the Calypso in his Odysseus and Penelope fantasy?





	Picking up the pieces.

Not this time.

She looks at the phone, still ringing. His name on the small screen, written in the blocky font of the old phone. She will not pick up. She knows perfectly well why he's calling. She has read about her death in the newspapers. Donna and the Dynamos was a popular enough band in the 70's that her death can make it in the news, even after all this years. Sam must be devastated, she thinks. But no. She can't afford to think like this. She must let the phone ring. She should shut down the incoming call, frankly, but she can't bring herself to do it. A few more rings and the call goes to voicemail. She hopes he won't leave one, but of course he will. She will have to erase it without listening to it. The sound of him crying would do her in. But she's done nursing Sam Carmichael's wounds.

She had done it once, a lifetime, or at least a marriage, a divorce and two kids ago. That summer. It should have been their first summer. They were engaged. She had fallen in love with this Irish man, so strong and supporting. Aspiring architect, ready to take on the world, he was reassuring her. A stable point in the world. Sam had went to Paris with two friends to get suits for the wedding. And that's where he had met her. Donna Sheridan, the lead singer of Donna and the Dynamos, finishing up a tour on the continent. A fierce and fiery woman, larger than life, a force of nature. She stood no chance against her. She was a calm and reserved girl from northern England. She wanted a quiet life with her husband somewhere in the english country. Donna wanted to travel the world, see the sun, sing on stage. Sam fell head over heels. No news of him for three weeks. And then he was there again, saying he was calling off the marriage and going to Greece to live with the love of his life. *She* was supposed to be the love of his life. He had throw away her life and their common future so calmly, like it meant nothing to him. And then he was gone again.

She hadn't cried. She just felt numbed to her core. All that she had planned, suddenly turning to dust. The shock, the distress, and the humiliation of being left on the side so easily. She had felt herself slowly drowning, but she couldn't bring herself to tell anyone what had happened.

And then, he was back again. A shadow of the man he was. His goddess had left him for another man. He couldn't think straight, seemed just has lost as she had been. She didn't wanted to at first, but she couldn't leave him in this sorry state. She had wanted someone to be there for her, she could be there for him. To be better than he had been, to repay cruelty with kindness, all these christian feelings she had been taught as a young girl. She thought she'd help him get back on his feet, and then after a few weeks they'll part ways in a more satisfactory fashion than this horrible breakup. But time passed and Sam did not look like he was getting better. And it was easy to slip back into old habits, and they were still officially engaged, and the wedding ceremony date was drawing near, and she still loved him, even now that he seemed so fragile, possibly even more so because of it, it was all quite confused in her head.

They got married. They just needed some time, to put that episode behind them. It had been a summer romance, an inflated bachelor party in a way. The daily life was there and they would build their future together. And in a sense, they did. Sam was a great partner in life. He had a great job, was caring, did his fair part of the chores, was a great lover and turned out to be a great father as well. But he never turned back into the man he was before this summer. Occasionally she would find him in the living room in the middle of the night, staring vacantly through the window, or sobbing in an armchair. She discovered that he used to google "Donna and the Dynamos", and the name of the pension his lost love had built in Greece. She was the one by his side but Donna was the one he was dreaming of. She had thought she was Penelope, faithfully waiting for his return when he had went to lost himself in the Greek Islands, but it was not so. Donna was his Penelope, and she was merely Calypso, keeping him on her English Ogygia.

She tried her best to make their marriage work. But to no avail. As the song from her rival went, _the winner takes it all, the loser has to fall._ Donna had won Sam's heart, whether she remembered him or not. And you get tired to play nurse. She let Sam go. She asked for a divorce, filled the paperwork, finish the best she could what he had started, and then put on hiatus, 18 years ago. She had thought he would immediately fly to Greece, but no, he was too afraid for that. He moved back to London, where he could drag his puppy eyes all around the city and show off how unhappy and miserable and broken-hearted he was.

It took two years and a letter from Donna for him to go back to Greece. In the meantime, she had remade her life. A three-room flat in her hometown of Manchester, a good job in an accounting firm. She was seeing men occasionally but overall was happy to be on her own and to only have to take care of her own emotional load.

 

And now, he wanted to come back to her once more, to use her shoulder to cry on. Well, not this time. He had his life, his son, his potential daughter in Greece, all of his friends who knew Donna. She would not play this part once more. Odysseus had only traveled once, and Calypso's story after the departure of the hero was still to be written. She did not know how it would go nor end, but one thing was for sure: it would not start by _"_ _Here we go again"._

**Author's Note:**

> [Paloma Faith, Picking Up the Pieces](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijel4Vcqd9g)


End file.
